"Any" definition in context for my moot court class

Question

Can "ANY" (I capitalized the exact word whose definition I am questioning) be grammatically argued or prooven to be understood as not meaning "every" but meaning "which ever you choose" eg there is more than one bus stopped allong the side of a school unloading and you choose to stop at the second bus rather than the first bus?
The example sentence:
A person driving a motor vehicle shall stop such vehicle when approaching, from any direction, ANY school bus which is stopped on any highway, private road or or school driveway.....
This will help me make an argument in my moot court class.

Clive · Accepted Answer

I would say any effort to justify that view is doomed to fail.

CalifJim · Answer

AnonymousCan "ANY" ... be understood as not meaning "every" but meaning "whichever you choose" ...?

Yes, that's one of the standard meanings of 'any', provided we don't take "whichever you choose" literally (no one is actually making a choice), but only as a loose paraphrase of "no matter which".

AnonymousA person driving a motor vehicle shall stop ... when approaching ... ANY school bus which is stopped on ANY highway, private road or or school driveway.

Hence, this sentence says that a driver must stop for a stopped school bus, no matter which school bus it may be, on a highway, no matter which highway it may be, or on a private road, no matter which private road it may be, or on a school driveway, no matter which school driveway it may be.

Similarly, when we say "It's so easy that any person in this room can do it", we don't mean that someone gets to choose a person in the room to do it.
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It seems to me that you'll have to concentrate on something more substantial than idiosyncratic word definitions in your class argument.

CJ

"Any" definition in context for my moot court class

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